Adventures of a farmer's daughter in Hawaii

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The Great Toilet Disaster

What happens when farms disappear? The landscape changes forever.

As a mom of a 2 year old boy, I sometimes forget that he is capable of doing some pretty disastrous things around the house. He’s been pretty good for the most part while my husband is away, except for tonight. My girls are usually pretty helpful too but that was not the case.

I was pretty proud of myself that I had cooked up dinner and was just about to finish washing up the last dish before setting off to bathe the kids. I stopped for a second to grab a Reese’s peanut butter cup before I was going to bathe my two younger ones. They were pretty quiet so I was happy to not hear fighting. Little did I know that the silence meant something very devious going on.

As I walked to the bathroom, I saw my Connor standing over the toilet pointing at something and saying, “Look momma! Water!” I thought that yes, water was in the toilet. As I stepped closer, I realized that the toilet was overflowing all over the bathroom with pieces of toilet paper floating gracefully in the swirling water. My calmness went out the window immediately. The entire bathroom floor was flooded with water and it was still pouring out of the toilet with Connor starting to splash in it! I looked at the toilet paper holder and realized that the brand new roll I put on earlier was completely in the toilet! I so wanted to swear and yell but kept to myself to take care of the issue at hand.

Thankfully, I had learned a few things from my grandpa on how to fix a toilet. I immediately went to the shut off valve and tightened it. I tapped the handle so that the water would stop in the tank. I fished out all the large pieces of paper as best as I could and started emptying the bowl. My first hope was to take the plunger to unplug it. I tried and tried and nothing was happening other than more obliteration of the toilet paper soup. I knew I needed another tool. I grabbed my toilet auger and spun that wire down the toilet. It took a little bit of time to wind its way to the plug but thankfully, I started to see the water drain down from the bottom of the rim all the way out.

After sopping up all the water and drying the floor, it dawned on me that with any problem, we need a variety of tools to fix it. If I only used the plunger, I’d be stuck with no upstairs toilet. I could keep using it but it likely wouldn’t have fixed the issue. By using the auger, that immediately solved the problem. It’s no different with farming where we need a variety of tools available. Without access to these tools, we stand to lose too much. If we discredit the scientists and other available tools, what will we be left with?

If I didn’t stick around to learn about the auger, I’d be left with calling Roto Rooter and probably spending a ton of money to fix my toilet. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that because I was equipped with some knowledge and know how to solve my problem. While the anti-GMO forces are once again convening to demonize pesticides, none of these people have any real knowledge about what they speak on or even the know how. When problems are encountered in agriculture, will we turn to these folks to solve it? Nope.

Even the politicians like Senator Josh Green and Representative Chris Lee don’t have the knowledge or know how on what it takes to grow Hawaii. They’d be the plunger users who act as if they are solving a problem but only stir the toilet waters getting nowhere. Hawaii needs to have those with real knowledge at the front of farming to lead the way. We need those with extra skills and smarts to problem solve our self sustainability goals. Right now, we have lot of people like Ashley Lukens, Nomi Carmona, and other activists throwing in lot of toilet paper into the toilet and flushing it, only to clog it up.

A lesson was learned tonight by my Connor that putting in toilet paper may be fun but it makes for an ugly and messy problem later. Hopefully, this toddler will get it and so will the anti-GMO activists too before they make an even bigger mess than what we started with. It might be fun to protest and play around but there are consequences if you don’t really think about what you’re doing.